Infiniti G37x — a coupe for all seasons

I’ve always thought coupes were overrated — styling exercises that weren’t very practical, cars that looked fine in advertising but in real life forced passengers to contort themselves like acrobats, bump their knees, throw shoulders out of joint and generally have a miserable time getting into a truncated excuse of a back seat.

Try fitting into the back of the current Jaguar XK series of sports cars. Great looking car; impossible to get into.

So when I got a new Infiniti G37x to try out — the “x” means all-wheel-drive — it looked like more of the same. Well, it isn’t.

There are some sops to comfort in the way Infiniti solved the problem of having a svelte design, yet made it more or less feasible for a passenger to get into the back.

Infiniti USA

Infiniti’s G37x coupe, a two-door that will carry four people with a fair amount of comfort.

This one actually works. First off, Infiniti put a button on the top left side of the right front seatback so the driver can move that seat forward when a passenger, entering from the right, wants to get in the rear. (This is something that occurs regularly when you carpool two passengers into San Francisco each morning. You learn about moving seats back and forth.)

Second, once the passenger is back there, there’s actually some room. I tried it. It was OK. It wasn’t great — sitting in the back of a coupe is almost never great — but it wasn’t bad. The up side is that you do get a good-looking coupe, in the bargain.

And what is the coupe?

In a way, it’s a stretched version of parent company Nissan’s 370Z sports car. But, as luck would have it, right before getting the G37, I had a 370Z for a day and, in a word, hated it. Yes, it was zippy and powerful and all sports-car dashing about, with its snickety-snick six-speed gearbox. But it was thoroughly uncomfortable (you’re really getting old, pal — Ed. note), with its hard seats and jouncing ride.

What I liked about the G37 was that it was all of a piece in its design. Everything fell to hand — window lifts, seven-speed auto transmission (with manumatic for the adventurous), HVAC and audio controls and, in a nice move, when you fiddle with the electronically adjustable steering wheel, the instrument pod rises and falls with the wheel, keeping the key instruments where you want them. The car, in its totality, seemed to have been drawn from a clean sheet of paper (even though it’s a a descendant of the G35; the numbers — G35 and G37 — stand, respectively, for 3.5-liter and 3.7-liter engines.)

Infiniti USA

The G37’s instrument pod moves up and down with the adjustable steering column. Why don’t more car makers do that?

If there’s a problem with the G37, it’s how it is slotted in that competitive market of upscale cars. It’s up against BMW’s 328 coupe, which costs about the same; and BMW, for better or worse (in my mind, worse) has the vaunted reputation of the blue-and-white rondel. It’s like those other German competitors, the one with the three-pointed star, or the one with the four interlocking rings.

Frankly, I’d take the Infiniti. Once you’re driving a G37, you’ll find that it has all the typical attributes of the Germans but is not as argumentative — yeah, I know, it’s a strange way to characterize a car, but when I’m driving an A6 or a 328 I sometimes feel as if I’m a guest in the car and it’s up to me to figure out how to work all the gizmos. It’s not as if they’re going to help.

The G37 is more forgiving. Its controls are simpler, its lighting more agreeable. On the road, it’s anything but a pussycat, however. The 3.7-liter engine now has 330 horsepower and the car will get out and there and hustle.

And, besides, the x model, with AWD, will presumably motor serenely on through winter storms, flooded highways and all the other examples of highway plague and pestilence that occasionally beset the humble driver.